Texas Voter Registrations Set New Record: 13.6 Million

They say everything's bigger in Texas: Voter registration in the state has topped a previous high.

KUT News

State officials say a record number of Texans have registered to vote in the November elections.

As of today, more than 13.6 million people have registered to vote in Texas. That’s about 20,000 more than the last presidential election year in 2008. And it's about 70 percent of voting age Texans.

"We’ve already broken the record," said Alicia Pierce is a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s office. "And we anticipate having more voters by the end of the week as counties continue to add registered voters who sent in their registration by the October 9th deadline.”

Despite the surge in registrations back in 2008, only about 60 percent of registered voters actually cast a ballot that November.

Early voting for this year begins a week from today (Oct. 22) and runs through Nov. 2. Election Day is Nov. 6.

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KUT News has received a lot of feedback on “Why Bother,” our series on voter engagement. Suggestions that include ideas for making voting and voter registration easier, personal recollections and more. We expect to hear more tonight, at a taping of “Why Bother? Voices of a New Generation,” in KLRU’s Studio 6a.

But one criticism KUT News has received involves the existing process potential voters need to take to vote – and whether local news organizations, including KUT, have done enough to make that process understandable.

A blog post by a local web designer, A. Lista, questions why KUT is probing voter disengagement when the actual process to voting is itself convoluted. The blog shows step by step what happens when one searches “how to vote austin tx” on Google. Seven screens later, the author says she is “exhausted, frustrated, and pretty annoyed with all the extremely unhelpful government websites:”

Both the local news and KUT have suggested many times that voters are apathetic and unengaged, but like the government, neither has aired simple instruction on how to actually go about voting. How do you know you’re registered? Where do you go to vote? These things are confusing.

Registering to vote in Texas isn’t that easy: one suggestion we’ve heard is that online registration would make things a lot easier. But Texas law requires voter registration cards to be sent in by mail or hand delivered in-person.

The idea may sound far-fetched. But Travis County clerk Dana DeBeauvoir has an idea on what it might look like.

“It has to do with how well each voter is connected to their local community,” DeBeauvoir tells KUT News. “For example: Do you own a house? That’s a point. Do you have children in school? That’s a point. All of those add up. And it turns out that people that have the most points of connection with their community are the people who vote.”

DeBeauvoir notes those variables are “roughly all about how old you are. It takes a while to get connected.” And those factors may have a lot to do with why young Texans are sitting out elections.